As usual, we scoured the internet for the best funding and growth opportunities for African startups looking to launch, grow, and scale their operations.
This week’s opportunities include female-focused entrepreneurship programmes, seed funding opportunities, and opportunities targeted at young founders. There is something for everyone.
Read through to see which ones your company is eligible for, and don’t forget to share with friends and colleagues who might benefit as well.
RevUp Women Initiative Call for Women-Led Businesses
RevUp Women Initiative is an enterprise development programme for early-stage women-led businesses in Africa. It is designed to accelerate these businesses into profitable & sustainable ventures that can stimulate the creation of jobs on the continent. The initiative aims to foster gender equality and inclusive economic growth through enterprise development training, mentorship, peer-to-peer learning and providing access to finance. This cohort is funded by The Visa Foundation.
AfriLabs is calling on women-led businesses across select locations in Africa to apply for this cohort of the initiative. In this cohort, 500 businesses will go through a rigorous training and mentoring session and ten (10), one(1) in each pilot city will be selected to be funded by the programme. Each of the selected businesses will be funded with a matching grant of 10,000 dollars, following the criteria and model of the Catalytic Africa fund.
Benefits: Up to $10,000 in funding from Catalytic Africa, access to the AfriLabs network, access to high-quality female mentors across Africa, access to additional funding opportunities.
Application deadline: July 14, 2023
Apply for the RevUp Women Initiative.
Fight for Access Accelerator
In partnership with Yunus Social Business, Reckitt will be supporting Social Enterprises accelerating access to water, sanitation and hygiene. The accelerator will provide training, mentorship, and funding to 6 social enterprises in water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) in pursuit of prevention and reduction of diseases such as diarrhoea, cholera, and malaria.
By leveraging the power of our people and our commercial acumen, we scale innovative, locally designed approaches that enable access to health and hygiene and create long-term, sustainable impact. By working with social businesses, our investment will live over and over again as the enterprises grow, continuing to create jobs and economic empowerment, enable access and drive positive health outcomes.
Benefits: Access seed funding, impactful bootcamps, expert mentorship from Reckitt’s health and hygiene specialists, and a diverse range of business functions.
Application deadline: July 31, 2023
Apply for the accelerator program here.
Westerwelle Young Founders Programme
The Westerwelle Young Founders Programme (YFP) is a six-month fellowship for outstanding young entrepreneurs uplifting emerging and developing markets towards a sustainable future. We offer targeted support to scale our founders’ ventures and develop their leadership abilities, with the following programme plan: a two-day digital kick-off conference, a six-month remote programme, a five-day conference in Berlin.
Benefits: Mentoring, peer learning, expert sessions, buddy programme, access to international community, invitation to five-day conference in Berlin.
Application deadline: August 13, 2023
Learn more about the programme.
WE Africa Leadership Program
WE Africa’s purpose is to put women leaders in Africa at the heart of transforming the environmental movement through inclusive, collective leadership.WE Africa was born through our frustration that the joint crises of biodiversity loss and the climate emergency also reflect a crisis and lack of diversity in leadership that needs urgent attention.
WE lead is our 12 month annual leadership experience for women environmental leaders in Africa. The program has been designed by leadership experts and co-created with our WE Africa fellows since 2021 and is grounded in our pillars of personal leadership, wellbeing, relationships for collaboration and peacebuilding, visibility for impact and radical imagination. On graduating from the WE lead experience the WE Africa fellows join our WE move community, which is as our path to scale our impact through collective action and paying it forward.
Benefits: 12 months of personalized leadership coaching, community membership, two immersive retreats for community-building and personal growth, weekly online professional development sessions.
Application deadline: August 15, 2023
Learn more about the programme here.
Creative Business Cup Nigeria
Creative Business Cup is much more than just a competition – it is a global year-round initiative that empowers entrepreneurs in the creative industries, helping them grow their business ideas, connecting them to investors and the global markets, and strengthening their innovative capabilities to the benefit of industry and society.
The Creative Business Cup provides an opportunity to get exposure and to meet industry partners and investors. The purpose of CBC Nigeria is to empower not only the participating startups but the creative startup community throughout Nigeria.
Benefits: A chance to win 1 million naira, accelerator programme, 5-day enterprise Bootcamp, mentorship, business support services.
Application deadline: September 4, 2023
Apply for the Creative Business Cup Nigeria 2023.
Do not forget to go through our previous posts for more opportunities to help your startup thrive.
